ShadowStepping
By Jonathon David
Hawkins
sometimes you don't know what to do
and you don't know what to say and you don't know what to do about it because
it hurts too much to get close to people because people always end up hurting
people and you don't know why they do it but they do and it hurts you because
all you want is someone to hold and someone to make you whole but instead you
build walls and barricades and trenches and moats to keep all the cruel people
out and all the kind people in but then you find out that there are no kind people
there are only cruel bastards and you're all alone behind your defenses and if
you try to get out you get caught in the barbed wire and you're left to dry in
the sun until you find out that there are some kind people but whenever one tries
to help you down from the bleeding wire some bastard comes along to screw it up
for you and there are times when you stand there feeling so cold and alone and
you want to cry because you're so sick and tired of being so ugly and alone and
being an outlander who doesn't belong to anyone or anything and you've done everything
you can to make yourself belong but all you've succeeded in doing is turning yourself
into a clown for all the beautiful people and as you stand there crying as you
think about the beautiful people and all of the ugly things that they do and the
night wind freezes your tears and sears your face and your hands get numb and
swollen and the wind cuts through your clothes and you start to shiver and shake
and begin to walk home but then you look up at the moon and a smile splits your
burned face because you realize that here in the dark is where you belong because
even though you're afraid of the dark this is the only place where they can't
see how sad and ugly you are and the beautiful people who are ugly on the inside
don't belong here in the outland only you and the freaks and the dogs and the
clowns and the monsters and the kings of pain and all the other followers of the
crow belong here and you all stand in the dark midnight sons and shadow men looking
up at the face of the moon listening to its beautiful twilight symphony which
guides you mile by mile to midian even as it goes unheard by the deaf ears of
the beautiful people and as you slip like liquid shadows across the umbral landscape
of our own warped minds you are kept warm by the cold carrion comforts that only
you and the other ugly people like you can find in the shadows of this outland
where monsters live and giants still walk the face of the earth and the moon tells
you that there is some justice in this cat driven universe with all of the people
both ugly and beautiful as clockwork mice in a maze where the walls are lined
with razors and the cheese is laced with cyanide and you grow up living in two
worlds the real one where all of their rules and all of their definitions hold
sway and your world where your words have the power and it's shaped by myths and
legends and stories of great men who are long dead and your world is so much more
beautiful and so much more just and you escape to your world as often as you can
but the more time you spend in that world the shittier things get in this world
and you find that you no longer belong here anymore you're an alien from the outland
and when you try to make things work in this world you find out it's too little
too late too harsh to cope with so you try to bring pieces of your world into
this world in order to make it more bearable and to weave a safety net to catch
you when the beautiful people push you down but you're too clumsy to be a hero
too weak to be a guardian and too doubtful to be a savior and no one believes
the old tales anymore except you anyway and you realize that the world has changed
too much for such old ideals and beliefs to hold the power to change things in
any significant way and the world has gone full circle and the forces of entropy
have dragged modern man through a regression that has lowered it to its most primitive
level and that is why we shoot each other on the freeways and shank each other
for our shoes and rape and rob and murder and molest and burn and destroy the
innocent and the world has grown too dark for a bright knight to cleanse it and
no paladin can hope to purify it and today's and tomorrow's heroes must be warlords
who sink from the murk of the outland not rise from the bright walls of camelot
and the glimmering chain mail must be replaced by bands of barbed wire and the
shining armor must be replaced by thick layers of concrete under which your emotions
must be hid and the bright shield must be set aside in favor of a mass of lies
and misdirection and the sharp and swinging sword must be replaced by hooked and
razored blades and words must be your spears and fury your lance and subversion
and duplicity the arrows that drag your enemies down and the black of crow's wings
must replace the flash of hunting falcon's talons and you must be hard as adamantine
and cold as a beautiful person's heart and as elusive as a dream of peace and
happiness and knowledge must replace righteousness if you are to succeed because
the world is a dragon that eats the innocent and rends the righteous beneath its
claws and if you allow yourself to feel they will drag you down and drown you
in the muck of the promises that spew forth from their lips in order to keep you
quiet and a dead hero is of no use to a child because it cannot protect him from
the words of the dragon so you must be diehard and cold and place yourself like
a wall between this world and the children if you are to protect them and keep
them safe and you realize that you are too weak to kill the dragon but if you
are cruel and wicked enough you can ride it and turn it back upon its own forces
and show no mercy unto the enemy for they are wicked and would show none in your
place and you must let them rely on the mercy of god if he exists to protect those
who should be spared and punish the punishers and why would a god allow children
to whither and die with their bellies empty and their hearts torn and the viruses
of their parent's sin coursing through their blood as the beautiful people eat
their fill and turn your world inside out and grind the innocent beneath the machinery
of their words and in times of despair you scream to the heavens for an answer
to why the unrighteous rule and all you get in this world is the burning unfeeling
rays of the sun that blackens your skin and steals your eyes so instead you turn
the other world the world of midian and the outland where the moon looks down
on you with her beautiful scarred face and you are free to be who you are not
what the world demands that you be and you curl into sleep on the cold asphalt
and listen to the song of the moon and count the winds of the crows one is for
bad news two is for mirth three is a wedding four is a birth five is for riches
six is a thief seven is a journey eight is for grief nine is a secret ten is for
sorrow eleven is for love twelve is joy tomorrow but tomorrow never comes here
in the outland but you get by without it because you must and that is the way
of the worlds and you answer the calls of the wild ones who rule midian and don
the armor of the king of pain and call on it to protect you from the beautiful
people and a small child climbs over the rocky ridge looking forward into the
desert sand looking always for the danger as he flees the bombing of his village
as a black girl sinks down onto a rock on the outskirts of her dying village crying
bloody tears her heart torn and soul broken in despair for what her life has become
as she watches the children die and a girl gently lays her hand upon the face
of her dead brother a soldier a hero a victim in a war of senselessness and politics
and a mouse dashes to earth tearing to get free of the clutching talons of a hunting
owl and in the midst of life we are in death and you know that this is the only
thing that links every living being on this planet we all have our own languages
our own desires our own prejudices and our own dreams and our own sins but we
all one day will die whether at the impact of a bullet or the claws of starvation
or the jaws of a predator or strapped in a mechanation of wire and plastic that
forces the recycled air of a sterile hospital room into tired old lungs death
will come eventually to all things and you think that it might not be bad that
all things to meet their end and they say the earth is dying and we must save
it but you think that perhaps we should simply let it be and perhaps the earth's
time has come and it has done its duty and served us well and deserves the rest
that all eventually find in death and the people who want to save the earth remind
you of the people who try to help monsters and they are good people but they perhaps
are misguided and don't understand that what they try to do is impossible for
we are all made as we are and we cannot be what we aren't and it is foolishness
to try and they try to drag you and the other monsters from the dark side of the
moon into the light of the noon-time sun for your own good but midnight sons shrivel
in the sun and shadow men fade in the bright of the day and no matter how hard
they try they can never truly belong in the waking world because yours are hearts
of darkness and the creatures of the outland belong in dreams and cannot belong
in the real world without sacrificing the part of themselves that makes them true
and as you skulk along the corridors of their world you can sometimes see the
glimmer of a lunatic in someone's eye and you know that beneath the pretty clothes
and the perfect hair and the tan skin awaits a dragon trying to break loose from
the chains that bind it because that person is an outlander like you but they
won't admit it and you can picture them lying in be at night tossing in the pools
of their sweat and you know they hear the bay of the wolves and long to run with
them but they force or are forced to submit to the rules laid out for them instead
of the law and order inherent in monstrosities and they live by eat your peas
and drink your milk and do your homework and say your prayers and don't say that
in public and work hard and be nice to all the other boys and girls and tow the
line and follow the rules and everything will be okay but those are rules to die
by because they chain your soul and imprison your spirit because they are the
rules and laws of the beautiful people and for a dog to live by the rules of the
beautiful people is like a hawk trying to live the life of a shark you are out
of your element and fighting in an alien world with cold blooded beasts with hearts
of coal and souls of ice instead you must rise above their rules and forge ahead
on your own path as tangled and crooked as it may be and you know that you must
follow the wings of the crows because they know the way home to midian where you
and all the others like you belong on the dark side of the moon because she has
found the beauty in her scars and you know that if you are ever to do the same
you must distance yourself from the beautiful people and the wind beats down on
you and your pack as you trudge ever homeward through the harsh bright white of
the blizzard and fear drives your weighted and weary legs onward because you all
can hear the approach of the baying hounds mingling with the shriek of the banshee
razor wind and through the blurred vision of dry wind burned eyes you think that
you can see the movement of white on white through the wall of driving snow before
you and your eyes throb with the effort of seeing but eventually you do see and
what you see stops your pack in its tracks and fills it with dread joy because
what you see is the figure of a genderless man walking toward you and his sharp
skin is white and hard as porcelain and his muscles are like chiseled ice and
his cobalt eyes peer out from a shower of wind whipped silk hair spun of the sound
of a black cat's paws on concrete and he walks through the snow unclothed unhindered
unharmed and you know that he does not ignore the storm instead he is part of
it an avatar of remoteness which he absorbs and emanates and he turns to you and
those cobalt eyes look to you in you through you past you and he opens his mouth
to speak to you and his opened mouth is a black gash opened on the surface of
his white face framed by the sharp square stalactites of his teeth and the thin
white banks of his lips and his silent voice is the scream of the driving cutting
wind and he speaks but a single word of command and your and your pack obey because
a blind man could see that this is an angel but though he is white he is not of
the winged harp playing seraphim of the beautiful people but the cold hard avenging
guardian angel of the midnight sons and all followers of the crows and your pack
presses on harder faster than before as he fades into the white of the storm's
wall behind you and the soon the baying of the hounds is cut short leaving a dirge's
gap of silence in the wind's wail as your pack's midnight exodus continues and
there are days when you can't stand the thought of being around anyone but you're
trapped like a rat in a cage with no place to escape to and they want you to be
the clown and to entertain them and being what you are you do your best to fulfill
that desire and it makes you sick to do so and your head starts to throb and feel
as though it is cracking and splintering like an ice cube dropped in a pot of
boiling water and still the bleeding fools around you yammer and yammer and yammer
and laugh at stupid jokes and pretend to be interested in the anecdotes of a boring
old man and the band plays old songs poorly and too slow and you try to keep yourself
from bolting for the door and running off into the night and you grip the edge
of the seat with the effort of the restraint and the ache in your head and the
frustration and the yammering make you angrier and angrier and the more you try
to hide the anger the more you keep it inside like a bottled demon the worse the
pain wracks your skull and you want to retreat to the bliss of a darkened bedroom
with a lighted stereo blasting a cacophony of pounding drums screaming guitars
and shouted lyrics written by angry men and let the noise and the rage fill the
cracks in your splitting head and the waves of anger and animosity drift off into
the darkness around you carrying the bottled demon with it as you fade into the
bliss of your mental abyss but instead you stay there in the loud and smoke filled
restaurant but it is the noise of inanity that surrounds you and it has no purpose
no power no will no meaning other than an illustration of what you hate about
people and how they care so much about things that don't mean anything and not
at all about the things that do and when you finally escape the confines of the
restaurant you're trapped in the car with the prattling of your family for what
seems an eternity as you drive home and by the time you arrive there the very
thought of even being in the same building with these people makes you want to
vomit and as the car rolls to a stop you bolt and run and let yourself be taken
in by the pounding of the blood in your veins as it pulses past throbbing temples
and the scream of the stars and the shouted lyrics of the scarred moon and you
let the shadows carry you numb you and take the ache from your skull as you run
past the lighted houses fleeing from the same stupid meaningless conversations
that are being held behind each glowing pane of glass until you let yourself collapse
into the seat of a swing and you let the tips of your toes drag through the sand
as your lungs clutch at the air like a dying man to his last hopes and let the
screaming night's silence carry you away and give you a moment's kind peace and
you sit there contemplating the fact that sooner or later you will have to return
to your house which is not your home and wonder about the day when you won't return
and sometimes words are your enemies because they drag at your tongue and twist
themselves as they pass from your lips and hurt where they were meant to heal
and you ache because you cannot express yourself and you try to write instead
of speak and that allows you to control yourself in what you say but still the
words will not come and you have to struggle and fight for each paragraph each
sentence each line of text and the reason is that you are trying to express pure
emotion in the language of man and it won't work because there are no words for
what you feel because the language of emotions is spoken through the arch of eyebrows
the flash of angry tear filled eyes the wails of pain and loss the scream of an
electric guitar the impact of a fist's blow the strength and warmth of a friend's
embrace on a day when life touches you with its coldness and the language of man
cannot hope to express emotion in its own terms because it is civilized and specific
and based on concretes and absolutes and is constrained by rules and grammar and
nouns and verbs and pronouns and adverbs and emotion has no rules has no guidelines
and has no books that tell you how you are supposed to feel and we are all born
naked into this world unclothed and unwarned of what is to come and our first
word is never mamma or daddy it is that first inarticulate wail that we let slip
in that delivery room when we first realize where we are and what has become of
us and what is to come and in second grade you were happy you laughed read played
told jokes sang smiled and felt real and clean but that was a long time ago and
you don't do any of those things for real anymore because when you were in the
third grade you started to change while others didn't in body mind soul sight
and they all laughed because now you were different and they kept laughing and
laugh still to this day because you're still different never stopped being different
even though you pretended to for awhile and they think you're clumsy because your
feet are heavy and drag at the ground while they dance around you and your hands
are slow and drop the ball when you play their stupid games but they are blind
as bullets because they do not see you dancing a dance more subtle and sinister
than they can conceive and they do not see that you play infinite games that are
so far beyond their fucking little football fields that their cramped minds cannot
fathom them you dance around their emotional outreaches and you play their emotions
like a viola making them happy sad scared mad as your cancerous mind sees fit
and you do so with such skill that they don't even realize that they are not feeling
their own emotions only thrashing about to the tune of whatever emotion you choose
to broadcast that moment like a bad song off the radio that bounces around inside
your skull like a bat gone mad and you laugh at them even though there are some
people who are immune or at least resistant to your control but even they can't
see what you really are because your scars have made you strong given you strength
and power and protection and the ability to hide and in their ignorance all the
beautiful people cannot appreciate the irony of it all because they are the ones
who gave you the scars they are the ones who cut you with their words their laughter
their sidelong looks as you tried to walk invisible down the halls terrified that
you would bleed to death before you could grow strong but you did grow strong
because you accepted yourself for what you are and you wear your scars like fine
armor and look out at the world from within your well with obsidian crow's eyes
but sometimes you feel lost in the screaming mass of people that writhe through
these halls and it's like swimming in tar because all you can see is black all
you can smell is black all you can taste is black all you can hear is black and
all of humanity is a pollution in your world clogging your pores choking your
lungs burning your eyes and the tar is impossible to swim in so as you sink you
hang suspended in the pollution gnashing your teeth in tar not knowing if you're
rising or falling eating or being eaten in the black and sometimes you feel brilliant
with fire burning behind your black eyes you know everything feel everything see
everything are everything and there is nothing you don't know and no concept you
cannot comprehend you know that anyone who rises to meet the challenge in your
burning eyes will be left nothing but a charred husk left to float on the secret
slipstreams of the outland as you shadowstep through the night sky but sometimes
doubt seizes at your skull and you realize just how weak you are and the daemons
in the back of your head take pleasure in showing you images of all of the times
that you've failed and weakness's cost with hard black air beneath your feet giving
way to insubstantiallity and your body falls through the night sky as the sun
rises and burns your body as the stars speed past you in your descent unwilling
to help you as luna flees the brightening stage as your body hits the tar with
a sound like a gunshot as your bones crack against its concrete hardness and your
eyes cold and fireless are knocked from your skull and your sun blackened flesh
explodes into a cloud of charred dust as you sink once more into the quagmire
hoping to rise once again some dark night and sometimes at night you sit on your
throne in the dark with crows at your shoulders and outlanders at your elbows
surrounded by all the ghouls goblins kings queens serfs knights samurai and monsters
that populate the mythology of your mind and you know that they are not enough
to make you whole and you crave someone to love who will love you in return someone
who will see past your scars and will help chain your anger and help keep your
daemons bottled but you're too ugly and the scars on your face hinder your tongue
so you are unable to use your feeble words to persuade them to look beyond how
ugly you are so the reality of your life hits you in the face like a hatchet and
you know you are doomed to walk like a leper through your life finding company
only in your own kind your own mind and death and sometimes life moves so slow
with glacial speed but other times it moves so fast you're afraid you'll burn
up and die with your eyeballs screaming and sometimes you have a dream were a
dark man preaches from his pulpit atop a car inciting them all to riot and you
begin to preach from atop your own altar of crushed cars and you and the other
each try to out preach the other fighting for control of the crowd as you toss
words like atom bombs the piles of crushed cars beneath the two of you grow and
you scream until your out stretched palms bleed and the hordes of humanity that
throng around you now belong to you body heart and soul and you unleash them upon
the earth like a wave of rabid vermin and sometimes you despise being their jester
and it fills you with an insane rage and urge to hurt them hurt yourself hurt
everyone hurt everything hurt whatever but they are ignorant fools because they
are too busy laughing to see your rage to see that you would love to slam your
fist down their throats and rip their tongues out at the root smashing their teeth
to shard in the process just so you can stop the fucking laughter but you don't
because if it wasn't for the laughter you wouldn't have any company a all and
sometimes you scream and scream and scream and scream and scream until the sound
tears your throat and you can taste feel the coppery trail left by the blood as
it trickles down to your gullet but still you wail like a banshee till he veins
in your face burst and your ears bleed and your eyeballs implode into empty sockets
and keep screaming into the dark in the vain hope that someone will he and you
know what it is like to be a blind man with eyes scaled by rage relying on your
hands to show you the world as it truly is as it truly could be you know what
it is to come to depend on that pair of strong beautiful hands to give definition
and bright meaning to the darkened confines of your life and you know what it
is like to have those hands ripped from your wrists by a savage dog leaving you
bereft for the loss of bright touch leaving you only eyes that see sadness desolation
despair ears that hear only laughter wicked cruel and clear and a tongue that
tastes only ashes and you wonder what happens to babies and children when they
die do they get carried off to a better place than the hell hole they were born
into or ar they allowed simply to rot and decay and you lay awake at night wondering
about it and asking the ceiling but the only answer you get is a crack in the
plaster and you know what its like to be a thin skinned porcelain mannequin powered
by emptiness shuddering at the thought of letting anyone touch you out of pity
because the kindness might crack your brittle shell allowing you to drain out
of its shattered remains and you feel that it's better to be an empty husk than
being pure emptiness and the two of you stand separated by a sheet of black glass
and your face is shadowed by the light that flows from her side of the glass as
the darkness on your side laps at your ankles like black sea water and you ask
her why she's leaving you letting him steal her away and horde her and she calls
you silly and says she's not leaving you and never will you'll be friends till
long after the earth ends and nothing he can do will ever separate you and he
can never come between you and her and your hands begin to bleed as you push against
the black glass and ask her can't you see that he already has and she says stop
it you're bleeding and you say so are you but she can't won't see or feel the
cuts on her face and as you watch the glass wraps around her like a clear black
bubble and you push harder at the slick surface trying to get to her and the glass
cuts tears rips your hands into lumps of bleeding meat and then your wrists and
then your forearms and then your elbows until all you're left with is bleeding
stumps as the glass bubble floats away with her and her light inside you're left
slumped in the shadows as the blood runs from your torn and bleeding no longer
there limbs to drain away into the darkness swimming about you as the screen fades
to black and the old man prattles on at you with his acidic stale bad coffee breath
and he tries to stare you down and you return his gaze in spades wishing you could
focus the derision you feel for the tired old dog into a spike of iron you could
drive through the top of his aging skull pinning his wagging tongue down so you
don't have to listen to his stupid fucking babbling anymore because his voice
feels like snot in your ears and you have to fight the urge to crush your ears
and grind them against your skull with the heels of your palms in trying to scrub
them clean and rid your ears and head of all the shit that teachers parents adults
spew forth from their mouths like raw sewage and you wish you could take every
cruel word he's ever said every cruel act he's ever performed that caused her
pain of head heart or body and turn it into pure kinetic energy and turn it back
upon him and let the physical blows rain down on his ungrateful skull so he'd
pay for the pain he's caused her and instead you sit on your hands and wince in
pain because she won't let you do anything and it hurts you when he hurts her
but all you can do is sit there and seethe at the air and feel as if the anger
that you're trying to contain will make you explode like a claymore destroying
all in your firing arc and you sit surrounded by people who want to be your friends
but you doubt they even know what the word means at least as you define it the
word means more than someone you talk to in the hall and get stoned with occasionally
it's someone who helps make you whole and is willing to help have and hold you
when you feel as if you'll die from the pain and crack you up side the head when
you do something incredibly stupid and they don't care who you are or what you
look like because they know what you are and they understand you and don't ask
anything of you other than that you be their friend in return and that means you'd
kill or die for them and more importantly keep living for them because sometimes
that's harder and people unload all the pain in their lives onto you your friends
do your friends' friends do your family does your family's friends do your friends'
families do and complete strangers do and when their troubles grow too large for
them to handle they pass the burden over onto your shoulders with the weight of
their words and it drives you insane and angry but not because they are trying
to make you help them bear their pain but instead because of the maddening frustration
you feel at not being able to help them and you wish that you could take away
all of their pain and trouble and bear it away yourself upon your own malformed
shoulders because you know you are used to better suited to carrying pain than
they are because it is inherent in what you are and what you've done all your
life but like the poles of a magnet like pushes from like and pain pushes from
pain even though misery loves company and so you are inadequate because you try
to comfort them with words but your lips cannot give shape sound to the screaming
in your heart and you try to comfort with your touch but you have stayed too long
in the outland and your hands are clumsy and don't know how to comfort without
crushing so you nail yourself to a cross of other people's pain and scream in
defiance and you can't explain to people why you do the things you do that your
head is so full of crap that you can't deal with it all because you think too
damn much until all you can do is think and your body locks up like a wind up
toy with rusted springs so you do everything you possibly can to keep from thinking
you get close to someone knowing that they won't be there forever but at least
they're there for now and you feel instead of think and you're allowed to be happy
but then they stab you in the back hard and unsatisfied with that they return
a year later to twist the broken blade and leave you crying in a pool of black
blood and then you find a friend a friend for life a friend for death a friend
for all time and this time when you feel what you feel is love pure and true love
for a friend love for someone who you would do anything for someone who lifts
you out of the blackness of your own blood but then someone comes to drag them
away and you fall backwards slipping sliding failing flailing back into the blackness
and you swear that if you won't be allowed to feel anything but pain then so fucking
be it you'll feel it with a vengeance you feel pain on the football field you
feel pain on the wrestling mat you feel pain in the sparring ring and if you cannot
gain access to these you will pound the rough canvas surface of punching bag and
strike until the blood and puss seeps from flayed knuckles and your foreknuckles
grow smooth and purple with constantly healing scars anything to make you feel
something pain anger rage love lost lust confusion bliss happiness sadness anything
but the emptiness of thinking and you relied on her to bleed away the anger and
drain the poison from your veins to keep you from exploding at the first spark
of insolence that incites you to anger and just by being near her she spreads
her calm but now she's gone and left you so now the only way left for you to vent
is to retreat to the three drugs that got you through your life before she came
along the three valves that let the scalding methane steam escape before it explodes
the purposeless engine containing it the three things the only three things you
have left the pain the writing the head games the pain is the first drug the on
with which you are most intimate your tongue is a brick of clay so since you can't
express the rage you feel in words you express it through the sport the combat
the violence the battle the pain you inflict on others hoping they'll understand
why you do it but they oh so rarely do and when there's no one left to inflict
the pain upon you turn it back upon yourself you strap on the football helmet
and slam through the opposing line holding an intimate conversation with deaf
men you crush your way across the wrestling mat and your opponent refuses to realize
you are pouring your heart out to him and in the sparring ring you small talk
in panting silence you slam forward pushing a fist into his chest hello and he
delivers a block that jumps your shoulder out of its socket hi how are you a kick
to his ribs shitty my heart's bleeding sir a front kick that places his toes like
a spear point in your solar plexus how so and as the kick drives the breath past
your teeth like steam from a whistle you rush forward like a bull in a ring swing
your fists four times with all your might connecting once she left me sir a ridge
hand to your jaw life sucks kid get a straw one weak hit to his chest thanks for
the advice a palm heel to your forehead that rocks back your skull bouncing it
off of your spine sending the world into an explosion of black and white poison
fireworks been great talking to ya kid and at night after you've talked to yourself
on the punching bag for half an hour and the pain from your burned and bloody
knuckles pushes against the endorphins in your blood like a straight razor against
cotton you sit at a desk lit by a single white candle while the stereo screams
obscenities in your ear and you try to let what you feel write itself down as
the poison flows like ink from your pen because your voice is weak and bounces
off of their concrete ears but when you trick them into reading your words they
can slip like hypodermic needles into their eyes and inject a fraction of your
poison burn the patterns of your anger into the back of their retinas make them
see a fraction of what you see hear a fraction of what you hear feel a fraction
of what you feel but there are times when the potency of the poison in your thought
stream is too wicked for written words too subtle for physical pain so instead
you select a victim from out of the herd single them out as prey and crouch like
a cat in their cranium and dig your clawed paws into their gray matter and shape
it like clay and play your head games until you've had your fill of manipulating
the simple minds of cattle and no longer desire need to vent your poison until
the next time you approach critical mass and every once in awhile you have to
run away from home school work friends family everything that seeks to encase
and calcify you in a concrete womb of false security where everybody knows your
name face number have their formulated opinions of who what why you are based
on your mother father brother sister and you just want to run away to a new place
where no one knows your face and give yourself a new name and just start over
from the beginning knowing what to do what not to do and how to be who what you
want to be not who what they expect you to be because you can feel yourself conforming
to their opinions with every action that you take and you fear losing yourself
in the ocean of their expectations and the two of you sit so close to each other
breathing the same air hearing the same words seeing the same lights flash across
the screen in a tale of love hope sadness and joy and you are as close as the
skin that brushes touches accidentally and your one wish is to speak how you feel
because maybe this one is to be the end of your vigil of loneliness but you dare
not speak for the wall of inhibitions and fears built up by years of isolation
and loneliness spent in the dark waiting for someone who is unafraid of the shadows
so instead you sit and let the silence continue because you are afraid of losing
what you do have if you break the pain of beautiful silence as images of other
people's false reality flashes across the screen as the truth bites deeper and
people broadcast their emotions like radio waves that your shadow laden brain
can't block out and so you feel what they feel as their radiated pain penetrates
the marrow of your fossilized bones and so you are forced to face the question
that is thrust upon your shoulders you must decide either to end their pain and
sacrifice your right to remain free of the gestalt of of pain anger sadness despair
and desolation that their seething emotions drag you into or you must isolate
yourself from the desperation they breath and breed but in that isolation you
would be forced to deal with the dragon that lurks festering in the darkness of
your own skull and so that is the choice you have to make between crucifixion
at the taloned hands of your internal demons or immolation on the altar of their
clinging emotions and you peel their clutching hands from your struggling limbs
and manage to leap into the abyss if only for a moment and allow your mind to
drift in an uncold sea of empathic deprivation as your reeling mind calms and
calculates tabulates the odds ends reasons rhymes of the emotional outreaches
that lap at the black shores of your internal isolation chamber and you reach
out past the veil and allow your fingers to trail through the currents of her
mind and as your fingers come away wet you raise them to your lips to taste her
character and allow your will to wrap itself around her emotions and roll the
words of her will about your tongue until you know the taste of her soul and you
can know the feel of the dusty winds that blow through the attic of her mind and
your mind reels out through the void looking searching seeking in the emptiness
for an end to the emptiness and you try on their minds like the skins of animals
hoping to find a soul that fits but when you find one you're shocked at the source
and are cast into doubt and your mind unlocks the lies truths and half truths
of other peoples lives loves and worries as with the twist of a silver key but
as the jigsawed puzzle pieces of your own brain fall about your own feet you are
helpless to interpret and put yourself back together or read the portents hidden
in the patterns of their falling and you stand there just staring at the fallen
yarrow sticks of your soul as you realize that for you it is impossible for the
doctor to heal himself and you must instead simply clutch at the wound and pray
for the bleeding to stop and you wish you could find solace in the sanctity of
combat with the flash of steel and the gnash of teeth and the stench of sulphur
because then you could take action to end your confusion but instead you find
yourself staring dumbly down the length of your life wondering why and the people
who bother to look mistake your empathy for true kindness and they call you nice
and call you good and call you kind and call you caring and cannot see your are
the worst type of poisonous infection that spreads among the population of humanity's
swarming horde and you scream in the agony of frustration as you lose your grip
on the abyss and fall back into the harsh light of reality
